THE next big earthquake has rocked the Bay Area, and people are struggling to cope with disaster.

Roads and bridges are damaged, structures have slipped off foundations, fires break out throughout the region. People are displaced, panicked and scared. Others seize the opportunity to steal — or loot, for a better term — as chaos reigns.

The initial response is to call in the National Guard to restore order and security. No problem. Thousands of troops deployed throughout the area would be more than enough for us to feel secure.

But what if there weren’t thousands of troops available? What if we’re experiencing a false sense of security with the Guard, believing it was ready in the event of disaster in California? Apparently, that could be the case.

When it comes to the California National Guard, the numbers look twisted. Guard spokesman Maj. Jon Siepman assures us there are approximately 20,000 men and women in uniform with about 12,000 available in case a new crisis arises. That’s after 5,000 being shipped to Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Guantanamo Bay and now the Gulf Coast with several hundred assigned to state missions.

The National Guard Association of California, a group that supports Guard troops, claims the California National Guard is stretched too thin to cope with a homegrown catastrophe.

State Sen. Joseph Dunn,

D-Santa Ana, has conducted his own probe, and his investigators learned that the number of so-called ghost troops add up to “several thousand positions.”

In May, California reported having 19,183 men and women in uniform. The association said numbers slipped from 16,350 in October 2003 to

15,193 a year later. That’s cause for alarm.

It’s hard to imagine that ghost troops would be any help in a disaster. Dunn believes instead of 12,000 ready troops, there’s actually 6,000 or 7,000 that could be deployed.

Consider this: The California National Guard sent 10,000 troops to the Los Angeles riots — and that was just the first wave. Overall, 21,000 Guard troops were deployed into L.A. Imagine a worst-case scenario … anarchy would prevail.

Perhaps the Guard isn’t lying. There are just open positions yet to be filled. Still, the problem is accountability. We need to know how many able-bodied, actual troops we have to ensure we’re adequately able to provide disaster relief.

That’s one of many lessons to be learned from the Gulf Coast. California and the Guard should know better than to short-change our security.